The Best Bird Food

What does this mean?

I find in speaking with individuals abut organic foods that most people just don’t really understand the difference between truly organically produced foods and conventionally produced foods, and that’s why people don’t think it’s all that important to buy organic foods. Once a person really understands the difference, they almost always choose organically produced foods.

No doubt, I am a strong advocate of organically produced foods. But I’m not a strong advocate of the “Certified Organic” label. Once again, with the label, bureaucracy is attempting to sneak its way back into our lives and in doing so the prices of our luscious and pure foods are climbing sky high. If you will go the distance and shop your local farmers markets, most of the time you can find fruits and vegetables that have been grown organically. They may not have gone under the rigorous tests that allow them to be legally labeled “Certified Organic”, but they are organic just the same if they have been grown without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Knowing the farmer and his or her product requires developing a long and lasting relationship, and possibly getting to know their other customers as well, but its well worth your time and effort.

Just what is the difference between organically and conventionally grown products? That’s what we will be attempting to explore and answer in this particular article.

Organically grown is a term we would have never run across years ago. Not long ago, the majority of us would be consuming fruits and vegetable without even giving a thought to the chemical fertilizers to make our foods grow larger than life and prevent our foods from being taken over by insects. In fact, all of us thought those two things were a pretty innovative idea! Wow, we could have fresh fruits and vegetables year round without the worry of spoilage or infestations of pests! What a new and wonderful idea. And this meant that prices would be lower across the board for all of our produce as well. The American people literally ate this idea up with enthusiasm. Again, “organically grown” was a term that virtually didn’t exist among the savvy and hip American middle class even fifty years ago.

Today, “organically grown” is developing a new standard by which most people who are concerned about the amount of possible carcinogens we are exposed to each and every day of our lives desire to live by. Those of us who are truly concerned about the amount of possible carcinogens that goes into our bodies, through various delivery methods, foods, the air we breathe, the water we drink and bathe in, the creams and lotions we apply to our skin, the medical procedures our bodies undergo, and more, want some amount of control, and we are controlling those methods first beginning with the food we eat, the first line of defense against aging and disease.

100% Organic – “Organically grown” means that a product, or the base product, such as corn, wheat, rice, etc., in a boxed product, was grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides used on it, and that the ground it was grown in has to be free of chemicals for a period of at least 7 years. This product may use the USDA Certified Organic seal after meeting all of the legal requirements and filling out all of the tedious applications and passing all of the tests, and paying all of the applicable fees.

Organic – This product only has to have 95% organically produced ingredients in the total package. But it must meet the same requirements as the 100% organic foods. “Organically grown” means that a product, or the base product, such as corn, wheat, rice, etc., in a boxed product, was grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides used on it, and that the ground it was grown in has to be free of chemicals for a period of at least 7 years. This product may use the USDA Certified Organic seal after meeting all of the legal requirements and filling out all of the tedious applications and passing all of the tests, and paying all of the applicable fees.

Made With Organic Ingredients – This product must contain at least 70% organically produced ingredients and may contain up to 30% non-organic ingredients.  The USDA seal may not be used, but the package may be marked as “Made with Organic Ingredients”. **When we were producing our bird foods, this is the label we used. However, that being said, over 95%, close to 100% of our ingredients were actually certified organic. But because we didn’t have our foods tested, because of the high cost and bureaucracy involved, we could not label our foods “Certified Organic” or “Organic”. But we were using ingredients that were labeled as such and actually came to us with the certification labels. This is where the bureaucratic water gets really, really murky. It’s like double certification, and those costs get passed down to the consumer. We didn’t think that was fair, so we didn’t go to the expense of having our bird foods “double-certified” so we decided to go with the “Made with Organic Ingredients” label and then educate our customers that our foods contained over 95% certified organic ingredients.

“Transitional organically grown” means that a product or the base product in a boxed product has to be grown in ground that was free of chemicals for a period of at least 3 years.  The USDA is no longer allowing this label to be used.

(Short Article by the USDA on Organic Labeling)

However, keeping all of this in mind, rules and regulations are more lax when it comes to manufacturing pets foods. The general premises are still held for “certified organic” and “organic”, but the enforcement of these rules and regulations are very lax. There are organizations a pet food manufacturer can choose to become a member of, but moreover it is not required, it’s more of a volunteer situation. Unless a pet food manufacturer is a huge corporation with sales that span the entire country and even International sales, many small pet food manufacturers just don’t see it as absolutely necessary to become accountable to yet another bureaucratic agency if they feel they are reliable and accountable in, of and unto themselves.

The (loosely) governing agencies for pet foods are FDA (Federal Food and Drug Administration), USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), FTC (Federal Trade Commission), AAFCO (Association Of American Feed Control Officials, Inc.), APPA (American Pet Products Association), AFIA (American Feed Industry Association-doesn’t really regulate pet foods, but represents the business, legislative and regulatory interests of the U.S. animal feed industry and its suppliers). In addition, each State has its own controls and regulations.

Conventionally produced fruits and vegetables are a no-holds barred pesticide-ridden, grown big and fast with chemical fertilizer, made to look shiny and tempting-to-eat colorful pieces of wax-coated dinner table center-pieces. In reality, when we take a bite into one of these tempting faux pieces of produce, we are left disappointed in a tasteless state of delusion. And the reasons behind this are the…chemical fertilizers and the pesticides that have seeped into the meat of the product. Chemicals, in my opinion, leach out and cover up the real taste of the individual piece of produce.

When a person compares the sheer difference in taste between the organically grown pieces of produce to a conventionally grown piece, the burst of flavor you get with the organically grown is the obvious difference experienced. A conventional piece of produce may look better, but only because of the potential carcinogenic chemical fertilizers and pesticides and waxy substance to make it shine and keep the pests away. But take one bite and you will know the difference. There is no comparison in taste. And the thought of eating a piece of produce free of potential carcinogens gives you peace of mind too. That in itself is enough reason to eat nothing but organic produce.

There is much controversy about just how much nutrition chemical fertilizers and pesticides actually strip out of the produce too. While chemical companies will tell you that using chemical fertilizers add to the nutrition of the produce, scientists are still at odds about this. And even if the chemical fertilizers do add to the nutrition of the produce, how much of the “chemical” nutrition does a living body actually absorb? How much of a chemical nutritive is bio-available to a living body?

So just how does this affect a parrot? Birds have a much more delicate system than humans do. And you will see how the conventionally grown produce affects their systems faster than you will see how it affects humans. You will see it in feather health, skin health, allergies, and behavior problems. Does your bird scratch a lot? Does it pull its feathers out? Does it mutilate its skin? Does it scream incessantly? Or, is it apathetic? All of these symptoms could be the result of chemicals in the food you are feeding.

And don’t think just because you are feeding a food that says it is “certified organic” that you are doing the right thing for your bird. There’s even more to this story.

All of the base ingredients of the food you are feeding could very well be certified organic, but if during the processing of the food the manufacturer is adding other ingredients, such as preservatives or laboratory-produced synthetic vitamins or food colorings, then you might be right back to the same problem you thought you were getting away from by feeding a food that is labeled certified organic in the first place. And it is perfectly legal for a manufacturer to add these ingredients to their products and the product still be “certified organic” because organic only covers the way a product is grown, whether it is grown with or without chemical fertilizers and/or pesticides, not what is added to the product during the manufacturing process.

When a manufacturer processes their foods so highly that the base ingredients are nothing more than a “mash”, and then they have to highly pressurize the mash so that it sticks together, this literally removes almost all of the real nutrition out of the food. In order to get nutrition back into the food the manufacturer has to add laboratory-produced vitamins back into the food. In addition, usually chemical preservatives are added to the food as well.

We all know how chemical preservatives can harm us as humans. We have read about them, we have heard about them. And MSG is found in virtually everything we eat, even maltodextrin. Maltodextrin is commonly used as filler and a “binder”, something to “glue” other substances together. So even if a brand name manufacturer says, “We don’t add MSG to our foods”, that may well be true, that they don’t actually add MSG to their foods because it is already in the maltodextrin their “outsourcing manufacturer” has in their stock products. In other words, the MSG has been added to the maltodextrin by the manufacturer of the maltodextrin before the “outsourcing manufacturer” of the bird food has received the MSG so the brand name manufacturer of your bird’s food is perfectly legal in saying that they don’t add MSG to their bird food! Do you see the slippery lie? And yes, the FDA allows any brand name manufacturer of any product to get away with this lie! And there are a number of preservatives that is used in foods today, under many names that you would never think of as being a “preservative”.  “Natural flavorings” is just one ingredient that carries with it the connotation that MSG is probably present in the food.

(Link to list of commonly used names of preservatives hidden in food.)

So between the chemical preservatives and the laboratory-produced vitamins, you are right back to where you started in feeding “certified organic” bird food to your bird when you are feeding highly processed foods. This is why I am a hard and fast advocate of whole-food nutrition for parrots and other companion birds. If at all possible I believe foods should be cut in larger chunks and fed in pieces that are as recognizable as the food they are whenever possible. Obviously this is not always possible, but when it is, this is the best method to use.

Digestive tracts are meant to be used. When they are used, digestive enzymes are stimulated and the entire digestive system is put at work the way it was meant to be used. When whole foods are fed, natural vitamins are available in a bio-available means and no artificial vitamins need to be fed in most cases if a bird is a normally healthy bird. The key to feeding a whole-food diet is variety. A person has to do a considerable amount of research to understand what nutrients are contained in each independent food and which foods to feed to make sure a wide variety of nutrients are being received by your bird. A person also needs to have a general understanding of “food combination” and how one food plays with and against another in the gut. As with all foods, you may think that you are feeding enough of one food to supply one vitamin or mineral, only to find out that by feeding another you are canceling out a portion of another so you are left needing to feeding even more of the one you are canceling out. Nutrition can be a tricky game so you really need to understand what you are doing if you are feeding only a small number of ingredients. But if you are feeding a large number of ingredients, then the likelihood of malnutrition declines with each additional ingredient, or food, you add to your bird’s diet. So “the more the merrier” is the statement to live by in the case of feeding a whole-food diet to your bird! And always attempting to feed organic

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Machelle Pacion / The BEST Bird Food / BirD-elicious! / Passion Tree House LLC © 2012 All Rights Reserved

*Information supplied by The BEST Bird Food or any of its contributors, associates, et al, does not intend to diagnose, treat or cure any symptom, illness or disease. Any information provided is strictly for the purpose of “sharing” resources. Should a reader decide to use any such information they do so at their own risk and holds author(s) and associates, et al, of The BEST Bird Food blog harmless in any and all legal matters concerning their health and the health of their family and/or friends and/or colleagues who they may share the information with as well as all of their pets and/or livestock whom they may practice the information upon.